


The Wolf Comes By

by Weasy



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bad Wolf, F/M, Light Angst, Post-Episode: s08e12 Death in Heaven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-15 00:09:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11794353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weasy/pseuds/Weasy
Summary: The Doctor needs a poke in the right direction, or a huge domino chain shove orchestrated from one single fixed point in time.





	The Wolf Comes By

**Author's Note:**

> Publish and Fates will be updated tomorrow, in the meantime I give you a little Bad Wolf one-shot. 
> 
> I tagged lots of ships because it's about all and none of them, how Bad Wolf and Twelve might think of them.

If there was a single consistent thing in the Doctor’s life, it was that he was almost always right. 

Why wouldn’t he be usually correct about everything when he’d lived so long? Seen so much, met so many people; watched them do the same stupid things over and over again. No matter the skin or metal suit they were dressed in. It was a bittersweet power.

He moved around the TARDIS automatically, running fingers over the smooth and slightly warm metal of the console. Up the steps, fingers dancing along the railing then floating painfully through empty air before finding the book shelf. The Doctor stopped, eyes closed as the old weathered leather spines soothed his senses. Everything felt… off. 

Danny was alive, Clara was staying with him. Everything was as it should be, but it didn’t feel right. 

He missed Clara’s presence, the possibility of her future presence. He wished he hadn’t lied about Gallifrey.

He missed her.

He missed her faces: not basic happy, sad, mad, but bemused and frustrated and excitement so real she lost her perfectly poised edges and became the human embodiment of wide eyed wonder. 

He missed those eyes.

The TARDIS thrummed lightly. The tiniest whine that told him she wanted something. 

The Doctor opened his eyes, his surroundings slightly fuzzy for the tiniest fraction of a moment as his pupils adjusted to the half light. In the centre of the room blonde hair whipped through his vision, flying out just behind the central column of the console, so fast he wasn’t completely convinced he’d seen it. He blinked, half way down the steps before his brain caught up with instinct, slowing him down. 

“Who’s there?” No response. 

He dropped down another step, one hand reaching towards the inner pocket of his jacket. “I warn you, I’m not in the mood.”

The TARDIS screeched in response, a chiding teasing noise that gave away her feelings. 

“You can shut up as well.” He muttered darkly, annoyed at her seeming omniscience. 

The Doctor moved lightly down a few more steps, frowning as he moved around what should be his private space. He didn’t want to be intruded on. Not now.

He didn’t have to go far before he saw her. Perched on the railing; legs swinging in the empty space below as her arms gripped the metal and held her tightly in place. She wasn’t looking at him, but leaning forward and gazing upwards at the cavernous ceiling of the console room. Her blonde hair fell around the roundness of her face. A little longer and leaner than he’d seen it last. Her hair was wild, spraying out around her face like a mane and the clothes completely different, layers of rags over tight fabric that clung to her skin. 

“Rose?” He hesitated, unable to move closer and unable to back away. It couldn’t really be her, the rational part of his brain insisted, stubborn in it’s refusal to believe what could not be. “You can’t be here.” 

She looked at him finally. The soft brown and gold of her freckled eyes capturing his stare; her head cocked curiously as though surprised to see him there, in his own TARDIS. “No, no, no, not her.” She agreed. The Doctor hadn’t wanted to be right. He turned his gaze to the console and tried to temper his breathing. 

“Is this you?” He asked the TARDIS and the whole ship seemed to shudder in indignation. “All right.” The Doctor turned up his palms and slowly quirked a half smile of apology at her before turning back to the girl on the railing.

Except she wasn’t there. “Hello? …Not Rose?” He ventured, taking a few tentative steps towards where she had been. 

“Bad Wolf.” The voice was right behind him and the Doctor span around to find her inches behind him. Bare feet stretched out as she slapped her heels back on the floor, one finger twisting through a lock of that messy hair as she eyed him curiously. 

He wanted to close his eyes to her inspection. He wanted to drink in every detail. He wanted to step away. He wanted to reach out and touch her. He found his voice. “Bad Wolf.” It fell off his lips like a sigh.

“You remember me.” A smile lazed across her features, huge and vibrant and so Rose it hurt. 

“You’re not the kind of looped ontological paradox one forgets.”

She laughed, head thrown back in pure joy and his eyes lingered on the body Bad Wolf wore so casually. The creamy column of her neck, the curve of her collar bone, the mess of golden curls he’d so often buried his face in, breathed in her scent. How long since he’d touched Rose? Was it a thousand years yet? The memories were rusty around the edges. Exact images replaced by feelings that haunted him like ghosts in unexpected places. Flickers of sensation, of hand in his running. Or her eyes, that could tell him so much in just a single glance. 

Maybe it was because he knew it wasn’t really Rose. Knew she was long since dead (or still alive, who knew, but inaccessible to anyone but her family and the other version of himself) but the urge to be truthful crossed him suddenly. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the Big Bad Wolf anywhere but stories.” 

She smirked, eyes twinkling mischievously. “Do you really think I only saved you once? Or…” She looked puzzled again. “Do you think it’s twice? Past, future, past, future… Tricky.”

He felt his jaw gaping a little while his mind tried to catch up. “How far did Rose send you through our future?” 

“I can see everything…” She reminded him. “All of time and space.” Bad Wolf almost looked wistful, her gaze piercing on his, a little more golden than it had been a moment before. It was amazing how much wolf was in her. Some funny piece of nominative determinism; that embodied her long after the name itself warned of anything specific. Now it just meant her, was her, she was the wolf.

“Then you knew we would be separated.”

Bad Wolf turned away, running her fingers over the surface of the console just as he had earlier. The TARDIS brightened slightly, responding to her touch. “I want you safe.” She echoed blandly. 

Rose had loved him. Why had he assumed that this entity so heavily rooted in Rose's mind would do anything else? How stupid was he to assume that she would have stopped intervening at the point their human counterparts had been trapped on the other side of the void; that Rose would ever have considered the Time Lord Doctor no longer her business?

“Clara…” Suddenly, Bad Wolf was sat on one of the jump seats and he turned automatically to face her. Resisted the urge to chase after her, tamped down the urge to try and touch her. “You needed her, she was born to save you. The Impossible Girl. I showed you so many times.”

“Yes.” He agreed. “Did she really have to keep dying though?”

“And Amy and Rory and Nardole and River and Bill.” The words tumbled out of her lips and he wondered at the muddle of names. Some still to come.

“Do you mind? About River?” It seemed impolite of him to ask and of her to even imply. Had his thousand year old ex’s moment of omnipotence had a hand in him meeting his wife?

She laughed again evasively. “Do you mind about the other you?”

He didn’t have to consider his answer. “No.”

It wasn’t because he hadn’t been upset, and jealous, at the time. Especially when he lost Donna too, so soon after. That version of himself struggled to let go. This one was different, warier, more difficult. Rose got to keep the man she fell in love with, and possibly, just possibly Bad Wolf was trying to be fair about their diverging futures. Bad Wolf was… unpredictable. It did what it thought was best without understanding the consequences. The Doctor didn’t know how he felt about this particular revelation, no matter how the wolf might have nudged she couldn’t create the connections he had built with others. There was nothing fake there. He still loved Rose, but he no longer thought about her constantly; he had loved others too. 

This wolf was sneaky.

“Do you want to know what it would have been like without them? Without people who refused to let you be alone?” For an instant she was back, so close beside him and leaning into his ear. He resisted the urge to turn into her, to seize those golden tinged lips in a kiss, show her his own free will and make her stop. “I keep you safe.” She reminded him.

He considered it for a moment. Would things have been better? Unlikely. “No.”

“Spoilsport.” She reappeared in front of him. So close he could just reach out, and pouted teasingly. “I like it when there’s lots of you.”

He cleared his throat. Tried to push away the thoughts that hadn’t crossed his mind in so long. “What’s the message this time? Why do I need looking after? I’m not that old you know.” He grumbled.

“You’re alone.” She leaned in, eyes boring straight into his. Uncomfortably direct. “Don’t be alone.”

“Well, it seems like I’ve always got you, whether I want you interfering or not.” 

Rose would’ve been hurt. Bad Wolf wasn’t, it just smiled with her mouth and fixed him with those age old eyes; the Doctor suddenly found her presence incredibly painful. Long buried emotions dragged to the surface and scattered all over his consciousness, already pained from saying goodbye to Clara and the disappointment of loosing Gallifrey all over again.

“Just go.” He snapped. “I don’t want you here. I don’t need you anymore.”

She blinked out of existence and he regretted his words instantly. The TARDIS, suddenly so huge and empty, was clearly cross with him and when he reached out to touch one of her levers it sparked under his hand, spattering his hand with burning darts of pain. He snapped his hand back and closed his eyes again, trying to find calm. “All right,” he stroked her surface. “I’m sorry.”

Slightly mollified his ship allowed him to pilot her towards the next destination; the TARDIS took over after a few steps so that he had nothing to do but sink into the console chair Bad Wolf had vacated, alone again with his thoughts.

“When you won’t do what I tell you to, is that you or Bad Wolf?” He asked his ship, grumpiness in every word. The TARDIS didn’t give him any response. “You’re keeping that secret, eh?”

The Doctor almost smiled, but it was swallowed almost instantly as his mind ticked back, worrying away at the puzzle the wolf had left him. “Missy told me she gave Clara my number…” 

It was pointless to speculate, he knew. Bad Wolf had clearly changed tactics a long time ago. Blazing a trail of her name across every writing surface available only happened when she needed someone that understood to play their part. How often had she meddled and not left a mark at all? The bad wolf stalking through the darkest forests of his experience, always beside him when she needed to be. How often had she kept him safe? Jack popped, unbidden into his mind. Bad Wolf had kept bringing Jack back from the dead for billions of years, if Jack really was the Face of Boe. Could the Doctor die? Would Bad Wolf let him go when the time came? 

He ran his hands over his scalp, feeling the wiry grey hair under his fingertips, leaning forward on the seat as he tried to calm his harried thoughts. The reflection of his face in the glass floor was shadowed, every line darker and more pronounced.

Circles were etched into the surface below him, breaking up the reflection of his cheek. A pattern he hadn’t noticed before. Leaning down he let his fingers dance over the indented surface. The rounded Gallifreyan script so unforgettable to him. “Bad Wolf.” 

“Fine.” He huffed. “I won’t be alone.” He stalked back over to the console and changed the course he’d set. “Don’t make me regret this.”

Behind him the TARDIS hummed, happily.


End file.
